Brewery returns to its roots with GEA equipment

Pittsburgh Brewing Company has turned to GEA in order to return to brewing its own beer again. GEA provided the brewery with a complete process chain, from brewhouse to cold area and bottling, to kit its operation out. The installation of the equipment began in August 2021 and was completed a year later.

The brewing business had previously used other sites to brew its lagers but it is now planning to produce it by itself, using the new equipment.

The new brewery is housed in an old glass factory, which provides enough space for the brewhouse, the tank farm with 100 BBL brewing tanks and 500 BBL fermentation and bright beer tanks, the filling and packaging plants, and additional retail space.

The components provided by GEA include its COMPACT-STAR craft brewhouse with five vessels, a MILLSTAR wet grist mill, a GEA WORTSTAR for wort aeration, a yeast propagation unit, the GEA Plug & Win craft centrifuge and other equipment for cleaning and pasteurisation, blending, carbonation and bottling.

A GEA DICON inline blender is used in the production area and can be used to make soft drinks, and a Visitron ALL-IN-ONE multifunction filling unit was installed to allow for small and medium volumes of beverage. The machine has a small footprint and rinses, fills, seals and seams cans and glass bottles using 64 filling heads. Brewers can switch between different bottle and can formats in as little as 20 to 30 minutes.

Capacity planning was also provided in order to avoid supply peaks, in additional to lowering the water consumption for the operation.

The new plant is designed for modular growth. Phase 1 provides for 150,000 hectolitres of annual output, which will grow to up to 500,000 hectolitres in phase 3.

Filtration is performed with minimal waste thanks to ceramic filters in the form of the GEA clearamic BeerFiltration equipment.

“Doing all the brewing ourselves from now on is a big step. The learning curve is huge,” said Todd Zwicker, President of Pittsburgh Brewing Company.

“We relied on GEA, and today we are proud of our iconic brewery — a project that we managed to complete on time thanks to GEA, despite the pandemic and supply chain situation. We want to be a beacon project for our region with the participation of the local community.”

Image credit: GEA